The Bughouse Affair (20 page)

She said, “When and where do you intend to make this presentation of yours?”

“Soon. As early as tomorrow morning, if arrangements can be made.”

Lord, he was infuriating! No wonder John disliked him so intensely, though it was John’s fault the fellow was involved. “Surely you understand that you have no right to withhold information in a robbery and homicide case.”

“From you and your partner? As you took pains to point out, I am no longer even marginally in your employ.”

“I meant from all concerned individuals. A man’s life has been cruelly snuffed out and his widow left grieving. Violent death is not a matter to be taken lightly.”

“I do not take it lightly,” he said. “On the other hand, I do not regard death in quite as serious a light as you Americans. We British prefer to face its inevitability in a matter-of-fact fashion, without undue emotion, and I might say less euphemism and pretense as well.”

Sabina said with temper, “There is no such thing as a national approach to either death or bereavement.”

“If that is your belief, I shan’t argue. However, there are many differences between our nations. We British…”

And he was off again on another monologue. Solidarity of British society despite problems with the Cornish, the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots, and the rebellious nature of the Empire’s colonies; traditions passed down over multiple generations; the lessons taught and learned through the long and glorious history of the British Isles.

Sabina thought she might shriek if he didn’t shut up. She forestalled the necessity by deliberately rattling her cup and saucer loudly enough to turn the head of the shop’s elderly proprietress.

Holmes blinked at her.

“You seem to have invited me here in order to pontificate and gloat,” she said. “I have better things to do with my time than to be subjected to either.”

“You misunderstand me, dear lady. My one and only purpose was to inform you that I have solved the case, thus saving you and your estimable partner the need to continue your investigations.”

“I’ll believe that when you’ve proven it to me.”

“And so I will—tomorrow.”

“When and where tomorrow?”

“The time and place have yet to be determined.”

Sabina had had enough of his sly, arrogant manner. She pushed her chair back and stood. “Thank you for the tea—and good-bye.”

The Englishman also stood. “The pleasure was all mine,” he said, and offered up another of his bows. “I shall let you know as soon as the necessary arrangements have been made. I guarantee neither you nor Mr. Quincannon will be disappointed.”

Sabina knew what John would have said to that, but she was too much a lady to ever use “Bah!” as an exit line. She took her leave in dignified, if bristling, silence.

23

QUINCANNON

The district known as the Uptown Tenderloin was a pocket of sin more genteel and circumspect than the Barbary Coast, catering to the more playful among the city’s respectable citizenry. It was located on the streets—Turk, Eddy, Ellis, O’Farrell—that slanted diagonally off Market. Some of San Francisco’s better restaurants, saloons, variety-show theaters, and the Tivoli Opera House flourished here at the western end of the Cocktail Route that nightly drew the silk-hatted gentry.

Smartly dressed young women paraded along Market during the evening hours, not a few of them wearing violets pinned to their jackets and bright-colored feather boas around their necks that announced them to those in the know as uptown sporting ladies. Men of all ages lounged in front of cigar stores and saloons, engaged in the pastime that Quincannon himself had followed on occasion, known as “stacking the mash”: ogling and flirting with parading ladies of both easy and well-guarded virtue.

Parlor houses also flourished here, so openly that the city’s reform element had begun to mount a serious cleanup campaign. The most notorious of these houses was the one operated by Miss Bessie Hall, the “Queen of O’Farrell Street,” all of whose girls were said to be blond and possessed of rare talents in the practice of their trade. Lettie Carew and her Fiddle Dee Dee were among the second-rank of Bessie’s rivals, specializing in nymphets of different cultures and hues.

The evening parade had yet to begin when Quincannon alighted from the Market Street trolley at O’Farrell Street, his pockets empty now of the stolen loot; he had stopped off at the agency to lock it away in the office safe. Above him, as he strolled along the wooden sidewalk, sundry flounced undergarments clung to telephone wires, another form of advertisement tossed out by the inhabitants of the shuttered houses lining the route. This, too, had scandalized and provoked the blue-nose reformers.

Midway in the third block, he paused before a plain shuttered building that bore the numerals 244 on its front door. A small, discreet sign on the vestibule wall said
FIDDLE DEE DEE
in gilt letters.

A smiling colored maid opened the door in answer to his ring and escorted him into an ornately furnished parlor, where he declined the offer of refreshment and requested an audience with Miss Lettie Carew. When he was alone he perched on a red plush chair, closed his nostrils to the mingled scent of incense and patchouli, and glanced around the room with professional interest.

Patterned lace curtains and red velvet drapes at the blinded windows. Several red plush chairs and settees, rococo tables, ruby-shaded lamps, gilt-framed mirrors, oil paintings of exotically voluptuous nudes. There was also a handful of framed mottoes, one of which Quincannon could read from where he sat:
If every man was as true to his country as he is to his wife … God help the U.S.A.
In all, the parlor was similar to Bessie Hall’s, doubtless by design, although it was neither as lavish nor as stylish. None could match “the woman who licked John L. Sullivan” when it came to extravagance.

At the end of five minutes, Lettie Carew swept into the room. Quincannon blinked and managed not to let his jaw unhinge. Miss Lettie had been described to him on more than one occasion, but this was his first glimpse of her in the flesh. And a great deal of flesh there was. She resembled nothing so much as a giant blond-haired cherub, pink and puffed and painted, dressed in pinkish white silk and trailing rose-colored feather boas and a cloud of sweet perfume that threatened to finish off what oxygen had been left undamaged by the patchouli and incense.

Even before she reached him she launched her into a practiced spiel: “Welcome, sir, welcome to the Fiddle Dee Dee, home of an array of bountiful beauties from exotic lands. I am the proprietress, Miss Lettie Carew.”

Quincannon blinked again. The madam’s voice was small and shrill, not much louder than a mouse squeak. The fact that it emanated from such a mountainous woman made it all the more startling.

“What can I do for you, sir? Don’t be shy … ask and ye shall receive. Every gentleman’s pleasure is my command.”

“How many Chinese girls are employed here?”

“Ah, you have a taste for the mysterious East. Only one at present, Ming Toy, from far-off Shanghai. And most popular she is, sir, most popular. However, she is currently engaged.”

“How long has she been engaged?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Only a short while? Or for a longer period? It is possible to engage the services of one of your ladies by day as well as by hour, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes. For as long as a gentleman requires. Ming Toy has been entertaining since yesterday and may continue to do so for the rest of today. Would you like to make a reservation?”

“What I’d like,” Quincannon said, “is to know if the lad she’s entertaining is young, slight, with thinning brown hair and a fondness for red wine?”

Lettie Carew raised one artfully plucked eyebrow. “And why would you want to know that?”

“Answer my question, please.”

“Our customers are entitled to privacy—”

“Balderdash.” Quincannon hardened his voice and his expression. “Is Ming Toy’s customer the gent I described?”

“And if he is? What’s your interest in him?”

“Professional. The lad’s a wanted felon.”

Lettie Carew’s subservient pose evaporated. “Oh, lordy, don’t tell me you’re a copper.”

He allowed his stern expression to convince her that he was. Identifying himself would have served no purpose; parlor house madams were terrified of the police, but not of detectives who had no official standing.

“Bloody hell!” she said.

“How long has he been here, Lettie?”

“Since yesterday afternoon.”

“But he did leave for a time in the evening?”

“He may have, I don’t know. Ask him or Ming Toy.”

“He’s here now, is he?”

“Upstairs. Will you let me roust him out so you can make your arrest outside? I have other customers. I run a quiet house and I paid my graft this week, same as always.…”

“No. Which room is Ming Toy’s?”

The madam muttered a naughty word. “There won’t be any shooting, will there?”

“Not if it can be avoided.”

“Well, if there’s any damage, the city will pay for it or I’ll sue. That includes bloodstains on the carpet, bedding, and furniture.”

“Which room, Lettie?”

She impaled him with a long smoky glare before she squeaked, “Nine,” and turned and flounced out of the room.

In the front hallway, a long carpeted staircase led to the second floor. Quincannon mounted it with his hand on the Navy Colt under his coat. The odd-numbered rooms were to the left of the stairs; in front of the door bearing a gilt-edged 9, he stopped to listen. No discernible sounds issued from within. He drew his revolver, depressed the latch, and stepped into a room decorated in an ostentatious Chinese-dragon style, dimly lighted by rice-paper lanterns and choked with incense and wine vapors.

He had no need for the Navy. Dodger Brown was sprawled supine on the near side of the four-poster bed, dressed in a pair of soiled long johns, flatulent snoring sounds emanating from his open mouth.

The girl who sat beside him was no more than twenty, delicate-featured, her comeliness marred by dark eyes already as old as Eve in the garden. She hopped off the bed, pulling a loose silk wrapper around her thin body, and hurried to where Quincannon stood. If she were aware of his weapon, it made no apparent impression on her.

“Busy,” she said in a singsong voice, “busy, busy.”

“Not anymore, Ming Toy. It’s the lad there I’m after, not you.”

“So?” The young-old eyes blinked several times. “Finished?” she asked hopefully.

“Finished,” he agreed. “He’ll spend this night in jail.”

She bobbed her head as if the prospect pleased her, then aimed a disgusted look at the snoring Dodger. “Wine,” she said.

“He won’t be drinking anything but water from now on.”

“Good-bye, Ming Toy?”

“Not until you answer my questions. What time did he leave last night?”

“Leave?”

“Yes, and what time did he return?”

“Not leave. Here all day, all night.”

“He never left at all? You’re sure he didn’t slip out while you were asleep?”

“I not sleep, he sleep. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. Drink, hump, sleep, snore. All day, all night.” Ming Toy wrinkled her nose. “Phooey,” she said.

“All right. Good-bye now.”

She went, vanishing as swiftly and silently as a wraith.

Quincannon padded to the bedside. Four rough shakes, and Dodger Brown stopped snoring and his eyes popped open. For several seconds he lay inert, peering up blearily at the face looming above him. Recognition came an instant before he levered himself off the bed in a single convulsive lunge.

The movement was so sudden, so swift, Quincannon had no time to straighten or set himself. Or to avoid the lowered head that thudded into his midsection and sent him staggering backward into a bamboo screen. The screen folded up with a clatter and he went down on top of it. Before he could untangle himself, Dodger Brown had the door open and was stumbling out into the hallway.

Quincannon shoved furiously to his feet. The damned scruff had gotten away from him once, but not this time. No, by Godfrey, not this time! He unholstered the Navy again as he charged into the hallway.

Brown was running for the stairs, and when Quincannon spied him he loosed a bellow that shook the walls, brought startled noises from behind closed doors. The little burglar’s head jerked around and his stride faltered, which caused one bare foot to slide and bind up in a carpet fold, which in turn caused him to stumble past the staircase into the newel post on its far side. He spun off with arms flailing, lurched sideways across the hallway, and thumped into the wall with such force that he bounced backward, somehow managing to remain upright as he did so. He threw a terrified glance at his fire-breathing pursuer, who was now almost to the stairs, and commenced a splay-footed run toward the end of the hall.

There was a street-front window there, but it was closed and covered with a red shade; the yegg’s only chance for escape, or so he thought, was through one of the rooms. He clawed at the latch on the nearest one, yanked it open, and plunged inside to the sound of alarmed cries from the occupants.

Quincannon got there in time to prevent the back-flung door from slamming in his face. He shouldered it wide and barreled through. A naked fat man and an equally naked, equally fat Mexican girl were in the process of scrambling off a rumpled bed in a confusion of arms and legs, while Dodger Brown sprinted past to an airshaft window on the opposite side. He was frantically trying to open the window far enough to squeeze his scrawny body through when Quincannon reached him, caught hold of the collar of his long johns, lifted him off his feet, and yanked him around.

Brown fought him with body twists, fisted hands, and a shin kick, but this time Quincannon was ready for his sly tricks. He slammed the burglar backward into the wall next to the window, deftly avoiding another attempted shin kick. Held him there with a cocked hip and poked the bore of the Navy squarely between his bloodshot eyeballs.

“You’re pinched, lad,” he panted. “Resign yourself to it if you want to keep on breathing.”